But do you not agree with Scott, a guy's who's been pro-accountability and working at the pleasure of a pro-accountability governor?

So herewith is a transcript from when Scott got into the "perversion" subject at last week's SBOE meeting. He's addressing complaints from the board that life in many schools has become practice test, pre-test, revise test, prep test, test and re-test.

I don't see how he's "making excuses for the educators," as Bill Hammond was quoted in the Texas Tribune. Maybe Scott was doing that later on.What you'll see out of Scott is that if anyone has gone overboard it's the locals, not Austin, and that the new STAAR system under development can correct things.

You'll also see his reference to the big business of big testing and how it's developed into a kind of "military-industrial" complex with billions at stake. I was surprised at his frankness on the obvious effect of money on education policy.

The transcript includes exchanges with Associate Commissioner Criss Cloudt, and board members George Clayton of Dallas, an academic coordinator at DISD; Mavis Knight of Dallas; Lawrence Allen, special projects director at HISD; Thomas Ratliff, government relations consultant from Mt. Pleasant; and Marsha Farney, an educator from Georgetown.

Scott promised a fair calibration, not necessarily an easy one. Then this:

SCOTT: We have to remind ourselves, too, that we are preparing our kids for a world full of test. Regardless of where your child goes, if you want to leave high school and become a police officer, a firefighter, a nurse, a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, you're going to take a test. You're going to have to. The world is full of, life is full of tests.

We hope this is not a discouraging, or disappointing process, but one that helps build a child's knowledge and understanding of tests that life is going to throw at them.

KNIGHT: How many days have been reduced, or has there been a reduction in days? Could you speak to that ...

CLOUDT: In terms of the number of days of testing, no student is scheduled for a primary administration to test more than 3 to 4 days during the school year. We have increased testing at the high school through the end of course program from 10 to 14 assessments.

Part of that decision was to separately test reading and writing, on English 1, 2 and 3, so a student would have an option to only retest on the reading or writing portion of the test. I think the initial days discussion comes in when you have to consider retests. The other issue is graduation, where we've moved from four tests at exit level TAKS to graduate, to eight to 12 tests to receive a minimum score in terms of graduation. ...

CLAYTON: In regard to the number of tests we've been discussing here, that is the number that the state is requiring. What's been omitted is how many tests THAT requirement generates within a school district.

In many of the schools in the Dallas Independent School District we have we have common assessments every two weeks in all four subject areas. So you're looking ... at mini-TAKS tests of 10, 15 questions. So what you're look at really are thousands of tests that are being given every two weeks, the assessment is being looked at, new tests are being written, all in preparation for the small number of test that the state is requiring.

So if you want to look at all of the tests and get a true picture, you're looking at thousands of tests inside the schools until many of the schools have become nothing but testing centers. So we cannot, I think, close our eyes to the fact that standardized testing has that kind of effect on education.

I have classrooms, I'm at North Dallas High School, I'm going over to Thomas Jefferson, that do nothing but test all the time based on these "very few" tests that the state is requiring. Let's be truthful about the number of tests.

SCOTT: I would only say that is a perversion of what is intended, and I can say that I've been to many schools where that is not the case.

And I do agree with you that in many schools that is the case, and that's why I've been very supportive of the Visioning Institute bill that is going to give this agency the authority to get 20 districts to serve as pilots for a new accountability system that maybe doesn't focus on testing every kid every year and maybe does sampling like the NAEP, and allows us to think beyond this current system that we have, because we do have many districts and many campuses that are overemphasizing testing.

Testing is good for some things. It is good for data, it is good for instructional practices, it is good for feedback, it is not the end-all, be-all of the universe. But it is important ... in making the system care about kids. I say this all the time: Parents care about kids, teachers care about kids, individuals in this room care about kids.

The system doesn't give a damn about kids unless you make it care. And that's really what the idea of testing and accountability was about, was to make the system care about kids, about different subgroups of kids, and not leave one subgroup to be stranded while the law of averages makes the campus look great.

Now I agree that we've reached a point where there's going to be a backlash against standardized testing. I think we hit it in the House last session, where I think the House voted unanimously to suspend all testing for two years. You can see that sentiment played out there. I don't think the reaction should be to swing the pendulum completely in the other direction. You've got to strike that balance.

CLAYTON: "Perversion"?

SCOTT: I know that's a strong word.

CLAYTON: Let's be truthful about what's happening in the schools, that testing has taken over the schools. That's all we do, is test, and prepare for tests, make an assessment, look at the data, prepare another test, from August till the end of the school year.

Commissioner, you know that's true. You know that in Dallas and many of the other urban districts, it's just normal procedure that this happens. The point I'm trying to make is, when we're talking about numbers of test, let's be truthful and not just reference what the state is requiring.

SCOTT: I understand your point. We are trying to figure out a way to strike the balance between what the state requires and the reaction from the local level that might overdo exactly what you're talking about -- too many formative assessments, too many mini-TAKS tests, too many STAAR tests during the school year. What we've tried to do with standards-based assessments is provide a guidepost and provide some quality control across the state. That works in many cases., and in many cases it does not. ...

What we're trying to do is set a benchmark for standards and for human behavior, and human behavior can't always be dictated from Austin, Texas, as much as we try. But what you see at the local level is an attempt to enforce that through a regime of mini testing that won't work.

If you look at it, this is where the frustration comes from -- you know, "drill and kill," and teachers getting burnout. I don't know how to stop that behavior, other than to say that's not the intent, and to tell them, "It's not going to work."

When you fundamentally get back to it, it's the quality of the teacher in the classroom, it's the quality of professional materials, the alignment of professional development, all of those things that go into the development of a quality classroom.

Simply regurgitating a mini-TAKS test or a mini-STAAR test every two weeks I don't believe is going to be ultimately effective and ultimately provide a quality education. I agree with you on that. Again, I'm trying to figure out a way to impart that that's meaningful. ...

What we've done in the past decade, is we've doubled down on the test every couple of years, and used it for more and more things, to make it the end-all, be-all. ... You've reached a point now of having this one thing that the entire system is dependent upon. It is the heart of the vampire, so to speak.

All you have to do is kill that, and you've killed a whole lot of things. I think there needs to be a balance here.

FARNEY: I know many times things can be misunderstood at the local level, and I try to share that with my local school districts.

One thing that's happened that I'm seeing frequently is that teacher evaluations will be based on their benchmarking, so teachers are artificially lowering the students' grades at first so they can show the tremendous growth that they've experienced through the year. And these are good teachers, but they don't want to have that lower score, or have the risk of not getting a good report.

And I do have to agree that it has taken over many good schools. My own son last week had eight hours of testing, for the TAKS test , practice, for the fourth grade. And he's at an exemplary school, wonderful teachers, wonderful principal, but we've had so much benchmarking, so much testing, and it concerns me how much time is being spent. ... I wish there was a way to convey to the districts.

Way back in the '90s when I was teaching in the classroom, I asked my principal for permission to be set aside from all those benchmarks, and let me just teach. I did not mind the TAAS test. I said my kids will do great, and they did, because I was not tied to all the benchmarks.

I wish there was a way we could reward districts for things instead of always being ... as another member said, they think it's punitive judgment.

SCOTT: That's part of the reason that bill passed last session. I had a group of superintendents, very good superintendents from wonderful school districts come to me and say, look, our kids in our districts are capable of a heck of more than the TEA is requiring of them on the TAKS test, but my teachers are telling me that all I'm held accountable for is this level, and therefore that's what I'm focusing on.

And so that sentiment led me to strongly support the idea of, let's look beyond this accountability system., see what we can do to serve our children better. Not a retreat, but maybe a different way of thinking about it. ...

ALLEN: Some of the unintended consequences of all this testing is the nature of the contracts that the administrators and principals are under one year or year-to-year contracts. And when they have one-year contracts they're going to focus on the one thing that's going to keep their jobs.

And no matter if you raise attendance, fine, and all these other things, if the test scores go down, you're going lose your job.

And when we talk about urban school districts like Houston and the others, the superintendent over 350 schools has to be able to report on what's going on in that district... .They're going to test, and they're going to test within two weeks so they can make a report at the board meeting. So there might be unintended consequences, but it's the nature of what the system is driving in terms of human performance and expectation.

It's not just people acting out because they don't know another way to go. They are really responding. And that's why we have to have a conversation about all this testing. If the desire is to know whether the student is prepared to go on to the next level that's one thing.

But it's driving the profession in a certain way, that we're not just asking people to play in the Super Bowl, we're asking them to win every game of the year., hit every benchmark, every aspect on the way. And that's only way we determine the quality of our schools. ...

SCOTT: We all started out on somewhat of a pessimistic note, we've all talked about the negative aspects of testing and accountability, but let me give you a more positive outlook.

The reason why we're doing things like the Visioning Institute bill, the reason why we recognized this was coming several years ago and are beginning to develop an accountability system that doesn't just look at the four core academic areas but how to recognize and reward a school district with a quality fine arts program, with a quality career and tech program, all of the things that when you read newspaper articles, you read blog comments, that say, "What about the kids in tech? What about the kids in fine arts? What about the band kids?"

You know, all of those things we are going to be developing in a new accountability system not to be punitive, but to reward and recognize all of those other things that our schools do for our kids.

And I'll speak to this as a parent. One of those most important things I did for my son was to get him to play the guitar and get him into fine arts. It was what drove him during high school. It is what enriched his life. I saw the value of fine arts, and I am a passionate supporter of fine arts in our schools because of that, because I saw the impact it had on a child.

And so I believe that an accountability system that lets us encourage the arts will help us get past some of this discussion that we're having. We tend to focus on testing because it is, as you say, the bottom line. We need to try to figure out a system where that is not just the bottom line, it is one piece of the bottom line, and that everything else that happens during a school year is factored into that equation.

Because I know for a fact that there's a whole lot more that goes on a campus than any other given day, not just TAKS testing, not withstanding Mr. Clayton's comments that some districts have gone overboard and are focusing too much on it. But I've been many campuses where the TAKS test is an afterthought. And I know many of you with children who are doing exceedingly well in school look at the TAKS test as an afterthought. ...

But we have families out there who maybe aren't as engaged, and the sytem is designed to make the system care about those kids, too. We just have to figure out a way to do it that doesn't clobber creativity and ingenuity in the classroom. ...

RATLIFF: I want to applaud you, encourage you and help you in any way as you develop a new accountability system to have a more holistic view of a school district.

I think what we've heard this morning is everything is focused on the test, because the test is the one thing that determines what's in the newspaper about how a school district is going.

And whether it's UIL participation, attendance, service hours, there's so much that's going on in that 185 days, that anything that you can do to recognize that is helpful for our schools, our kids and our teachers and will present people like Bill Hammond a more accurate view of what's going on in the classroom and not just one test on one day when we give all kids the lowest grade, because that's the way it's set up. I think it will help the entire environment.

SCOTT: I can't agree more. I have to say that the Legislature, because they saw this coming, and they enabled this agency to develop a new accountability system that does recognize every other thing that goes on besides the test. I do see the value in testing.

I've been a proponent of standardized testing, for some things, and I want to continue to use it, for some things. But we have overemphasized it, and even if we haven't overemphasized it specifically at the state level, the perception out there is that it is the end-all, be-all, and that is causing behavior in many cases, to compound upon itself, and even if that's not the intent at the state level, that's reality.

And perception is reality, so once they perceive that is all that counts, that it's all we're looking at, that's all they focus on. And so I think that this new accountability system, and things like the Visioning Institute bill, will try to bring back some of that balance and recognize that there are plenty of other things going on in schools and plenty of other things we need to be focusing on.

What I worry about is that the policies that we set in the Legislature, and how that translates down to the local level, and I think the sentiment that comes down to, for many years people have said that schools districts need to operate like businesses. In many cases, they are.

The assessment and accountability regime has become not only a cottage industry but a military-industrial complex. And the reason that you're seeing this move toward the "common core" is there's a big business sentiment out there that if you're going to spend $600-$700 billion a year in public education, why shouldn't be one big Boeing, or Lockheed-Grumman contract where one company can get it all and provide all these services to schools across the country.

I mean, that's really what you're looking at. We're operating like a business.